


Taos

by lokilickedme



Series: Chemical Prehistories [1]
Category: Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Alicia's POV, Chemical prehistory, F/M, Mention of Underage Sex, Non-Explicit, One Night Stand, One Shot, brief mention of underage sex between a minor and an adult, mention of underage prostitution, narrator is dying, runaway teen, unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:16:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6153451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angels without wings are dependent on the kindness of others to help them fly, since all that's left for them on their own is to wander on foot.  A fifteen year old runaway making his way across the country alone and a wealthy older businesswoman waiting for a client each have a lesson to teach each other about life and survival - lessons both of them will carry for the rest of their lives.</p><p>A short pre-history to Chemical, told from Alicia's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taos

 

I'm not sure who I'm writing this to, or for...I just know that I need to put it into words so that it exists somewhere after I'm gone, even if it's never read and the paper that holds the story disintegrates with time before eyes ever fall upon it.  I'm told it won't be long till that very thing happens to me, disintegrating with time...but I'm hoping for a little grace from heaven or the universe or whoever is in charge of these things, because I just really really want to meet this baby, if only once.

I know it's a girl.  I've named her Cara, I'm not sure why other than it's just a pretty name and I think her father would have liked it.  He may never meet her, but I hope one day he gets to.  I think he deserves to know there's a bit of him somewhere, proof that he exists, proof that I existed. Proof that for one night, however wrong it was, nothing else mattered but he and I.

He was just a boy, but I didn't know that.  He was so beautiful, so perfect...far too young for me, even at the dishonest claim that he was eighteen. I'd never seen a human being so heartbreakingly lovely, so purely ethereally aesthetically _pleasing._  He was sleeping on a bench in the bus station and I watched him from across the waiting area, waiting as one does, growing impatient as my client failed to materialize off any of the buses that kept arriving in an endless parade of travelers.  I could have stared at him for hours, and maybe I did.  My eyes didn't want to give him up, and later, neither did my heart.

In a fit of aggravation and boredom, I had gone and quietly sat down next to him, just wanting to transfer some warmth into him or maybe some comfort, human contact if he needed it.  He looked so cold and uncomfortable all folded up there on the bench, his impossibly long legs tucked up to his chest, his endless arms wrapped around them, and I knew he'd been traveling a long time...he had that look, that disheveled, displaced, disassociated look that I'd seen so many times on homeless people during my own travels.  He woke up and smiled at me, and in those sleepy big blue eyes I saw a million sad stories that I knew he'd never tell.

I don't know why I took him back to my hotel room with me, other than it just seemed the right thing to do.  With a face like that, I knew he wasn't going to be a risk to me.  There was too much kindness and a deep, almost painful longing there in the sweet smile, and in that brief moment when he shyly told me his name, I thought perhaps he was an angel that had lost its wings.  The stories are full of tales of people being rewarded for helping angels, aren't they?

I know they're true, those stories.  I'm one of them.  My reward is kicking the back side of my bellybutton right now, as I type this.

 

His name was Tommy.  I knew he wasn't lying when he told it to me.  I don't know why I didn't catch the lie that came next, though...maybe I didn't want to, because I _needed_ to help this angel.  It doesn't make it right, but it lessens the shame a little.

My intention was never to sleep with him, at least that's what I tell myself.  I wanted to give him a good hot meal, let him take a hot shower and clean up, send his clothes out to the hotel laundry to be cleaned and pressed.  Nothing so beautiful should be so forsaken.  That perfect face didn't belong in those dirty clothes.

I didn't know how many nights he'd spent on bus station benches in the cold, but I planned on giving him my room to sleep in while I got myself another.  But somehow it didn't work out that way, and when I reached for him to touch his long, shiny black hair, still wet from his shower, he turned his face to me and his eyes dropped down to my mouth.

"You're eighteen?" I asked, just one more time.  He nodded, but his eyes weren't meeting mine.  I dismissed it, because I wanted him, I needed that sweet young man to share himself with me, and it was such an overwhelming need that I slipped my hand inside the towel around his hips and touched him.  The simple moan that left his throat, so quiet I almost didn't hear it, pulled at me...and I was lost.

 

We made love for most of the night, sleeping a little here and there, but even though I knew he needed to rest, I couldn't leave him alone.  He handled me so tenderly, so gently, with so much sweet passion that I couldn't let him stop for longer than it took to let him have a quick nap.  I had protection but I didn't use it.  I wanted him, all of him, without anything between us.  And no man, not before nor since, has treated me the way he did, with utmost respect, a sweetly excited curiosity, and a wild, almost reckless abandon that made me feel eighteen myself.

And in the early morning, after I'd woken him again and coaxed him into another round, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me.  This was the moment when most men would give their one night stand a cold glance or a dismissive smile as they got up to pull on their pants and leave, but not him.  Not my black haired angel.  He looked at me as if I was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to him, and it was obvious to me in that moment that I had been his first.

And I wished with an aching heart that he had been mine.

 

I had to get back that day and had a bit of travel ahead of me, so I ordered room service and sat across from him while we ate.  He was ravenously hungry again like he'd been the night before, and in the bright morning light I could see it in his face - it had been a long time since he'd eaten this well.  I ordered more and watched with satisfaction as he devoured it all.  And as I was dressing to leave, he stood and picked up the ratty backpack that he'd dropped next to the bed the previous night.  All that was in it was a lightweight old leather jacket, as ratty and beaten as the backpack, and a folded up piece of paper.  He handed it to me, shyly, and stood there watching me as I unfolded it.

"It's all I have," he said quietly, and as the final fold straightened, my heart crushed into jagged shards and scattered to the winds.  In my hands was a missing child poster with his picture on it.

I sat down, hard, unable to drag my eyes away from the photo.  It was a couple of years old, but it was definitely him, a beautiful smiling little boy, too tall and too skinny and far, far too good for this world, with long black hair and big soulful blue eyes.  His name really was Tommy, he hadn't lied about that.  But as my shaking hands and tearing eyes scanned the words looking for a telltale series of numbers, all I could do was look up at him and see the apology in his face.

He was fifteen.

 

I should have been angry.  I should have yelled at him, cursed him, made him ashamed of what he'd done.  Called the police and sent him back to the people who were looking for him.  But I couldn't...he was only trying to survive, and in his eyes I could see it.  He was looking at me the same exact way I was looking at him.  Like I was an angel without wings.

 

And so in the end we saved each other. We helped each other fly.

 

The innocence in his face, tempered with the awful things he'd run away from, gave me a fierce determination to make this right, to do right by this boy who had trusted me enough to sleep next to me, a stranger, when it probably went against every self preservation instinct he owned.  While he stood staring at me with an uncertainty in those enormous blue eyes, unsure of whether I was going to kick him out or call his parents, I made my decision to help him any way I could.  If what he ran away from was so bad that he was willing to sleep in bus stations in the cold to escape it, I wasn't about to send him back to it.

He confessed that he was heading for San Diego and that it was important he get there.  I offered him money, picked up my phone to get him a plane ticket, but in his first and only act of aggression he took the phone from my hand, shaking his head angrily.  He didn't want handouts and he didn't want money.

 _I'm not a prostitute,_ he said, letting me take my phone back from him while the anger melted quickly from his face as I stroked his cheek.  He was so tall, I had to reach up.  I sighed, resigned to what I knew I had to do.  It hurt and I couldn't bear the thought of it, but sometimes life is like that.

 _You're going to have to be if you want to make it,_ I told him.

 

What I taught him makes me ashamed now, as I think back on it, but for all I know it kept him alive and got him to his destination safely, with hot meals and warm hotel rooms along the way.  Or maybe it didn't...maybe he didn't make it.  Maybe the end of the road for him came soon after we parted ways.  I hope not...I'm not a religious person, but I do pray that he got where he was going and is okay, wherever he is.  His daughter is a kicker, obviously as strong and determined as him.  If I live long enough for my words to have any meaning to her little ears, I'm going to make sure she knows her daddy was beautiful, and kind, and a sweet, lost soul that changed my life in the single night I knew him.  I'm much kinder now myself, more understanding of others, more generous to those less fortunate.  He made me better.

I miss him every day.

 

And now it's six years later and I'm picking up this letter again.  I'm still alive, though probably not for long now.  I have a few more things to wrap up before I can say goodbye, and finishing this letter, I feel, is the most important one.

I found him.  Tommy.  My sweet black haired angel without wings...he made it, like I knew he would.  I feel slightly dirty at having sent a staff investigator to locate him, but I had to know he was alive and well before everything comes to an end.  I had something I wanted him to have, and now that I've sent it to him, I can leave knowing that he'll be okay.

He's twenty-one now, a man.  All grown up.  My employee brought me pictures, obtained less than legally, but I had to see him, to know he was alright, to see the proof with my own eyes that he's healthy and happy.  He is.  And he's still beautiful, more beautiful now than I even remember him.

He'll be getting a letter as soon as I'm gone, telling him I've left him a bequeathal.  He'll be notified that I've passed on, and the money is his to use however he sees fit.  I included a note, written in my somewhat illegible handwriting, telling him to buy himself something that will give him a sense of belonging.  He didn't belong anywhere when I met him, and something tells me he's still adrift in this world.  I want him to feel, finally, like he's a part of everything, that he belongs here as much as anyone else.  His wings were taken, so all that's left for him to do is find himself a place where he fits and settle into it.  I want him to have that.

His daughter is six years old now.  She looks just like him - all raven black hair and big blue eyes and pale skin and fine bones.  She's going to be tall like her daddy.  I'm not telling him about her - this isn't the kind of bombshell he needs dropped on him at this stage in his life.  I'm going to leave it to her to find him if she wants to, when she's old enough to decide for herself.  I've left her all the means necessary to locate him if she chooses.  I'd love for them to somehow be in each other's lives one day, but I refuse to force it on either of them.  It'll be up to them.

And now I can finally wrap everything up, take care of final affairs, make my phonecalls and move on with the business of moving on.  Tommy was the defining event in my life, the thing that made me open my eyes and start seeing people around me instead of just looking out for myself.  We're all here together, in this world.  We should look out for each other, help each get a little further down the road.  He taught me that and I've never forgotten it.  I feel sad that that all I could teach him in return was how to use his pretty face and young body to get what he needed to get where he was going, but in the end he got there, so I suppose it wasn't such a bad lesson.  We all do what we have to to survive...some of us just have to do worse things than others.

 

Did I love him?

Yes.

Do I still?

 

_Yes._

 

 

 


End file.
